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The Furry World from the Inside Out

Open Post: The Stuff You Never Think About

There’s all sorts of things that would have to be different about the world around us, were it a truly furry world. These can be as simple as structuring chairs differently, or as complicated as equal rights for all species in a multi-species setting. Lets collect a bunch of them here, just for funsies! I’ve divided the list up into species-specific and non species-specific issues, with sub-categories in the species-specific category. Inspired by this.

Species specific

Snakes, Nagas, and the like

Stairs could pose quite an issue

Giraffes

Doorways could prove to be awkward, and building every building to accommodate might be impractical

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About Makyo

Makyo spends her time as a frumpy arctic fox, usually, but she's all over the map. She's been around furry since about 2000 under a variety of names. She writes, programs, and screws around with music.
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3 thoughts on “Open Post: The Stuff You Never Think About”

– Cups. Without lips many species would either have to lap from them, or have small pitchers so they can just pour liquids into their mouth while hoping they don’t make too many funny noises in the process. Laughing while drinking would be even more interesting than it is for humans and resemble volcanoes instead of sprays.

– Differences in the senses are a major issue. Some species are blind, others are just colorblind to certain (and different) colors, others are nearly deaf, others can’t smell anything. Now imagine trying to design a traffic light (both for drivers and pedestrians) when a significant portion of your users are blind and/or deaf, and even the ones that aren’t may not be able to see random colors. Social issues may arise as well when a dog meets a bird and the dog can instantly tell the bird’s emotional state, where she’s been, what she ate yesterday, possibly where she lives, whether she’s married, has children, and that she’s not drinking enough water. Social issues go from privacy to politeness to negotiation advantages, similar to the sci-fi issues of telepaths living with non-telepaths.

– Fair accommodations for all species. Snakes with stairs were mentioned. Elephants would require structural reinforcement on just about everything. Giraffes would require special doors (or all doors would have to be 20 feet tall or have large clearings on both sides so ducking would even be possible), excessive stairs would be difficult for avians so you’d have to provide access from random perches throughout buildings without elevators, stuff would have to be made with a giant range of sound frequencies taken into consideration. Otherwise, all the canines are going to walk into Sears and start screaming at everyone other over the high-pitched TVs while the reptilian store clerk is wondering what he’s doing wrong because all his customers keep yelling at him.

– Carnivore confusion. If every animal is anthro, is everyone just OK with carnivores eating other intelligent beings? Is there a social etiquette to who you can eat, when, and whether you have to inform next of kin? Do carnivores have wars with herbivores because carnivores have to survive somehow and herbivores don’t like getting eaten on their way to work? If there are non-anthro animals, there’d probably be tons of rights groups that are there just because it’s really uncomfortable when someone eats something that looks exactly like you except for it walks a little differently.

– Equality in jobs would be even more complicated. It’s unfair to not let someone work somewhere because of the color of their skin since it doesn’t affect their performance. But with species, there are very applicable differences that, while exceptions might exist, would be rare. Elephants are going to be stronger than dogs. Dogs are probably going to naturally work better as a team than most cats. Cats are better at ruling the world. But what happens when you have that dog that REALLY wants to be a furniture mover and is insanely good at it, trains 8 hours a day for it… but still can’t hold a candle to the elephant who works out maybe once a year.

One thing I always thought was an interesting concept would be how anthropomorphic characters would handle the task of bathing. Would they need to be cleaner than a human, and if so, how do you get all that fur dry? Also, how would you cover the rather offensive smell of animal musk in day-to-day life? A quick spray of deodorant isn’t going to cover, say, the smell of a vixen in heat

And for that matter, what about mating? Animals only really mate seasonally. Could we honestly live as creatures that mated seasonally?

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[adjective][species] is a blog that takes a look at the furry fandom from the inside. The writings here come from a wide variety of furry authors, and cover any and all meta-furry topics that we can get our paws on.